Educated Consumers

Meet some parents with an attitude. They shop for schools the way
they shop for minivans, demanding solid information and plenty of
it.

Seven years ago, William S. Rice and his wife set out to buy a new
house in the St. Louis suburbs. With a 4-year-old daughter about to
enter kindergarten, another young child, and a baby on the way,
top-flight schools were high on their priority list.

There's nothing unusual in that, but Rice wasn't content to take the
word of real estate agents or friends who vouched for a particular
district. He wanted the facts.

And when he popped into schools to ask for data, he got nowhere.
"They just looked at you," the 39-year-old marketing and communications
executive recalls.

He and his wife arranged hourlong tours at dozens of schools. These
yielded "a subjective feel" about each place, Rice says--but even that
was frustratingly inadequate. Gradually, Rice became fascinated with
the lack of readily accessible, consumer-friendly information about
school performance.

So he decided to provide it himself.

Last fall, Rice published "School Scorecard," an analysis of 364
public schools in and around St. Louis that sells for $8.95 at local
bookstores, supermarkets, and drugstores.

Rice is one of a new breed of parents who bring a strong consumer
orientation to their dealings with the public schools. They're not
content to play supportive roles on the sidelines, as an earlier
generation did. These parents want a voice in policy decisions.

They comb through district budgets and challenge spending
priorities. They ask for certain teachers for their children and
question teaching methods, often using the Internet as a research tool
and a way to keep in touch with others.

They demand higher standards, and they're not a bit shy about
sounding off on what they think schools should be doing. As
well-educated professionals, they feel confident of their own judgments
and they're willing to do homework to back up their demands.

These parents, many of them baby boomers, grew up in a consumer
oriented society.

"You can walk into Barnes & Noble and pick up six or eight or 10
publications to buy a car you're going to have for five years that will
cost $15,000 or $20,000," says Rice. "But when it comes to making a
decision of this magnitude--of schools for your children--there's
nothing like that."

These parents, many of them baby boomers, grew up in a
consumer-oriented society. Many came of age during the activist 1960s.
Now that they're raising their own children, they're frightened by the
barrage of negative news about public schools. And because families are
smaller today, parents tend to focus more attention on every aspect of
their children's lives--starting with education.

Vocal Minority

"The people who had the 'Question Authority' bumper stickers are now
parents," says Jeanne Allen, the president of the Center for Education
Reform, a Washington-based advocacy organization. "It really does hit
home."

Consumer parents haven't received much attention from educators, who
talk far more about boosting the involvement of disengaged parents. But
they're out there.

And though they may be a small slice of the public, these parents
tend to be influential in their communities. Depending on how they're
treated, they can either be key allies or formidable foes for
schools.